Poor spending threatens NC’s Covid-19 readiness
23 July 2020
Provincial government’s dismal spending of disaster funds received in April 2020, is clearly reflected in the province’s failure to set up an effective Covid-19 response. This has prompted the Democratic Alliance (DA) to call on Premier Zamani Saul in conjunction with the newly appointed MEC of Health, Maruping Lekwene, to ensure that spending of yesterday’s newly tabled emergency budget, particularly for health care, be urgently prioritised.
The fact that the Northern Cape spent only R1 million of an additional R6, 2 million, that had been allocated for the procurement of personal protective equipment (PPE) and ventilators in April already, was reported during a parliamentary briefing by the Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Department on Tuesday.
What they revealed is disconcerting but not surprising.
In general, the provincial Health Department is a department that easily diverts funds towards corrupt activities while failing to spend on actual health care. In fact, the Auditor-General found that in the previous financial year, this department significantly underspent on the procurement of equipment. Yet, at the same time, we see a situation whereby the Hawks are investigating a R500 million case involving falsification of documents, price fixing, conflicts of interest, quotation forgery, VAT and income tax fraud, circumvention of open bid and tender processes, overriding of internal controls, exploitation of the sundry payments system, extreme deviation from supply chain management processes, fruitless and wasteful expenditure and unauthorised and irregular expenditure.
The Health Department’s failure to spend on its core mandate, is recklessly endangering the lives of patients and all medical and other staff working on the frontline. Provincial government needs to come clean on what it has done with the remaining R5,2 million that it was allocated in April. Otherwise, we can only surmise that this money may have been used as a partial bailout for the indebted health departments, to alleviate some of its long outstanding debt, instead of on PPEs and ventilators.
At the same time, we cannot allow the provincial Health Department’s past misconduct to continue compromising government's ability to fund and resource an efficient disaster management strategy now.
Given the reprioritization of R398 million to the Health Department, we cannot help but feel concerned that this money will once again not be speedily and efficiently allocated to best respond to the pandemic through the appointment of additional health professionals, the expansion of high and low flow oxygen capacity and the setting up of field hospitals, of which the province still does not yet even have one.
As the Northern Cape continues hurtling towards a situation that may see our current health system become overwhelmed, the DA will make a special request to the legislature’s health portfolio committee to establish a standing weekly meeting with the Health Department, in order to assess their procurement plans and ongoing progress made in terms of delivering an efficient Covid-19 response.
Four months into a lockdown meant to ready the government to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic, we simply cannot allow even another second to be wasted. In case Health has forgotten, we are in the midst of an emergency situation requiring emergency procurement in order to save lives and protect vulnerable communities.
Issued by Andrew Louw, DA Northern Cape Provincial Leader, 23 July 2020
